The prior art has disclosed various interactive information handling systems which store electronic documents. These systems vary in complexity and sophistication from the very simple personal computer employed in the home for writing letters to the very large main frame data processing systems in which thousands of users nodes interact with each other and with a centralized library or file of information. An example of a sophisticated system that is currently in use by several large governmental agencies and private corporations is the system referred to as PROFS that is marketed by the IBM Corporation. These types of systems store and manage millions of documents ranging from one page memos and messages to multi-page reports that might involve several printed volumes. In many of these systems, the need for hard copy no longer exists, so the only copy of the information is the originally generated electronic copy.
The management and control of the paper flow in any large enterprise, be it a governmental agency or a private corporation, requires a set of procedures which define how various types of communications or documents are to be handled. This is a necessity in both manually implemented systems which deal in nothing but hard copy as well as electronically implemented systems that deal only with electronic copies.
It is generally recognized by both types of systems, that there are two basic document control strategies that must be enforced in order to have an effective and efficient system. The first is that documents that are no longer needed should be deleted from the system as soon as possible and the second is that a document that is required should be maintained as long as it is needed by the document owner or the enterprise.
It is obvious that in implementing these two basic concepts it is not always possible to obtain an agreement, much less a consensus, on such items as to who makes the decision to keep or delete a document, does this decision apply to all document types or does it change with the type of document, can there be exceptions and changes in the criteria, who determines the time period for document types, etc.
The prior art systems that involve a large number of users who create electronic documents that are stored in the system at a logically centralized location, do generally impose a number of structured formatting constraints on the manner by which documents are identified in the system. In most systems, some type of document classification system is established, either on a formal basis or a de facto basis. A bank might use a functional business classification for documents. For example a customer's loan folder might include a "loan application", a "credit history", a "payment history" etc. These various documents have different retention requirements and there is generally no provision made to permit any deviations from the established retention criteria. In prior art systems, a search is performed on a specific term contained in a plurality of documents to be deleted. The term may have a different meaning within each of the documents. Thus, this form of document management may result in the deletion of documents which should not be deleted or the omission of documents which do not contain the term and should be deleted. A batch type of approach to document retention, where the date to delete the document is controlled by the enterprise, creates a problem when the date has to be changed. If the date that the document is to be deleted is shortened, there are undoubtedly some persons who are relying on the fact that the document is to be available up to the previously established date. How does the system administrator evaluate whether these documents can be destroyed. If the documents are deleted there is likely to be some direct adverse consequence to those persons who were relying on the document for their work. A more serious long term consequence however results when documents are destroyed early, in that there is a loss of integrity of the system which soon results in users operating their own backup document storage system which defeats the many advantages of a centralized system.
It is therefore important in electronic document storage systems to provide the user with as much flexibility as possible in as many areas as possible. The problem of providing flexibility to the user however almost always adds to the complexity of the process and requires the user to obtain and retain an understanding of all the various options available and the nuances of their differences. It is extremely important to have the data that is used to manage the retention and deletion of the documents, entered correctly into the system. The data entry process for the end user of the system must therefore be simple to use, yet permit a more sophisticated user to take advantage of the more advance features. The data entry process must also be fail safe to insure that only valid descriptors are entered into the system.
The invention described and claimed in the cross-referenced application Ser. No. 07/138,533 is directed to an improved method for use in an interactive information handling system in which the data entry process for the descriptors that are used in the retention and deletion of documents is simple, flexible, and fail safe, and therefore avoids many of the problems that occur with the prior art document storage systems.
The method of the invention disclosed and claimed in the cross-referenced application Ser. No. 07/138,231 involves a recognition of the respective document retention needs of the document owners and the document retention criteria of the enterprise that functions as the central administration of the system, by establishing a dual label and expiration dates for each document that is to be stored in the system. The first label is referred to as the Document Label (DL) and functions, for example, to identify the business use classification of the document. The second label is referred to as the Ownership Label (OL) and functions to identify a document classification assigned by the owner.
A separate expiration date is associated with each of the two labels. The ownership expiration date is set by the owner to indicate the length of time that the owner desires ownership of the document. Ownership implies the authority and responsibility for the document during the ownership period. A System Administrator (SA) for example establishes the allowable retention periods for each of the document labels. Each document filed in the system has associated with it the label and expiration date criteria that are employed to automatically manage the retention and deletion of documents from the system.
When a document is to be filed by the system, the retention and deletion selection criteria are entered into the system and stored in the system at the same time as the document. The information is entered into the system interactively by the end user by following a series of prompts presented on the screen of a display device by the system in response to the user having selected an option presented on a menu screen. Valid document labels are preferably pre-established so that the user selects a particular document label from an established and approved list. The default expiration date for that document label has been previously established by the enterprise and is preferably entered automatically. The end user may override the default expiration date with a valid expiration date. Valid ownership labels are also preferably pre-established by the document owner and are approved by the enterprise. The document owner can establish a default expiration date for each ownership label which can be entered automatically when the ownership label is entered. The end user may override the default expiration date for the specified ownership label with a valid expiration date. The ownership expiration date and the document expiration date may be tied together with an expiration rule. For example, for a given document label, the expiration dates must be equal.
Documents are automatically retained and deleted by processing the expiration date criteria associated with each document relative to a current date according to the following date relationships.
If the current date is less than both expiration dates, retain the document.
If the current date is greater than both expiration dates, delete the document.
If the current date is greater than the ownership expiration date but less than the enterprise expiration date, retain the document but transfer ownership to the system administrator or the designated user. Transfer is based on a preset list by ownership label by user.
If the current date is greater than the enterprise expiration date but-less than the ownership expiration date, retain the document.
The methods described in the above mentioned cross-referenced applications result in an effective and efficiently managed electronic document storage system. However, the system does not reflect any consideration for an end user who had access to the document prior to the time the document was deleted. Since the document may be deleted automatically when the ownership expiration date is reached or when the document expiration date is reached, the non-owner end user can suddenly discover that the document no longer exists in the system. One obvious solution to overcome such a problem is to allow the non-owner end user to make a copy of the document to guard against it's destruction. That solution may be acceptable for documents that are not revised or where the validity of the document's content will not change over time, but it is not a good overall solution to the basic problem.
The present invention is directed to a more general solution in which the non-owner end user is allowed to enter a request for a delayed copy of the document which is acted upon by the document owner at the time the document owner takes an explicit action to delete the document.